Quentin Tarantino Almost Cast Tom Cruise In ‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’

Once upon a time, Tom Cruise was almost in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Quentin Tarantino‘s latest feature has a mega-watt cast, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Margot Robbie, Al Pacino, Timothy Olyphant, and Dewey Crowe from Justified; the film also stars Brad Pitt, as DiCaprio’s stunt double, but QT revealed in a recent interview that the role could have gone to Tom Cruise.

“We talked about it,” he said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast about the Mission: Impossible star taking the role. “He’s a great guy, and we really hit it off and it could happen on something else.”

One of my favorite ways to pass the time is to imagine what famous people who have nothing in common, except for the fact that they’re both famous, talk about. Did Cruise pitch a scene where he jumps off the Hollywood sign Did Tarantino suggest a 15-minute monologue where Cruise would talk about, like, the Mamas and the Papas I must know!

Tarantino also discussed casting Pitt and DiCaprio in the same film for the first time (they were technically both in The Audition, directed by Martin Scorsese, but it’s a short film). “The reality of it was, people ask, ‘Was it always these two guys’ And I’m like, ‘Well, it’s the casting coup of the decade.’ You can’t count on that,” he said. “They both have to respond to it, they both have to want to play they roles, they have to be available. There’s a whole lot of stuff there.”

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, minus Tom Cruise, opens this Thursday.